Chile votes in polarizing presidential runoff as far-right takes lead

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans will be faced with a choice between far-right José Antonio Kast, a career politician running for the presidency for a third time – the overwhelming favorite according to polls – and left-wing Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party member and former labor minister.

With the candidates on offer so starkly opposed in their visions for Chile, many will be casting their votes for a candidate they don’t feel wholly represents them in an election in which participation is compulsory.

At a closing rally in the southern city of Temuco on Thursday evening, Kast gave a lengthy speech, restating the core themes of his campaign to a crowd of several thousand, many of them young men waving Chilean flags.

Guttural cries of “Communists out!” rose among the crowd, but the loudest cheers were reserved for mentions of deporting migrants and the mass imprisonment of criminals.

“I’m voting for Kast because of his security agenda,” said Benjamín Sandoval, an 18-year-old student voting for the first time.”The country is very unsafe, you can’t even go out after 10pm these days. They could attack you, and it’s the migrants who are doing it most.”

Across the country, a remarkable fear of crime has gripped people like never before, fueled, in part, by intense media focus.

In a 2024 Gallup global safety report, Chile ranked sixth out of 144 countries for fear of walking alone at night, despite being among the safest nations in Latin America.

Although violent crime has always been present in Chile, it has ticked up significantly over the last four years, with homicides spiking in 2023. But recently the number of murders has begun to fall again.

Illegal migration has also been pushed up the public agenda, mainly as a result of an influx of hundreds of thousands of arrivals fleeing economic collapse in Venezuela since 2018.

Far-right Kast, a Catholic father-of-nine, has capitalized on these fears.
He is the son of Michael Kast, a German soldier and Nazi Party member who emigrated to Chile in December 1950. He later established a meat-processing factory in Buin, a quiet town south of the capital, where he also helped build six churches. José Antonio’s brother, Miguel, went on to become a prominent minister during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Kast himself is an ardent supporter of the legacy of the dictatorship, under which tens of thousands of people were tortured, murdered or disappeared, and cut his teeth in student politics campaigning in favor of General Pinochet in a divisive 1988 plebiscite on the continuation of his rule.

But in this campaign, Kast, leader of the far-right Partido Republicano (Republican Party), has carefully steered clear of the controversial issues that hurt his previous presidential bids in 2017 and 2021, including his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.

The only glimpse of his lifelong moral agenda was a fleeting response in a televised debate: “I’m the same man I’ve always been,” he answered.

His campaign has mentioned little else beyond public security and migration, but he has proposed cutting corporation tax and slashing the public budget by $6 billion within his first 18 months in office. But he has refused to say how that would be achieved beyond the mass dismissal of public employees hired during leftwing President Gabriel Boric’s time in office.

Kast’s opponent in tomorrow’s vote could hardly be more different.

Jeannette Jara, 51, served as an undersecretary in Michelle Bachelet’s government before becoming labor minister under current President Gabriel Boric. In that role, she led popular pension reform efforts, oversaw increases in the national minimum wage, and helped reduce the length of the working week.

Like Boric, Jara was a student leader having joined the youth wing of Chile’s Communist Party at the age of 14. Since 2015, she has been part of its central committee.

Her campaign focuses on affordability, including a universal core income of about $800 a month funded through gradual minimum-wage increases, lower electricity bills, and state savings contributions to help 25- to 40-year-olds buy homes.

As Jara prepared for her final rally in Santiago, Roxana Muñoz, a 58-year-old cashier, spoke over a band playing cueca, Chile’s national dance, as lights danced on the trees in a small park chosen for the event.

“I would never vote for a man who speaks so badly about women, he thinks we are just here to procreate,” Muñoz said. “I totally identify with Jara.”

But if polling holds, Kast is poised to win, becoming Chile’s most right-wing leader since Pinochet’s dictatorship ended in 1990.

A win for Kast would also be seen as part of a wider trend across the region: Bolivia ousted socialists who had governed for nearly two decades, Argentina’s La Libertad Avanza scored a decisive victory in legislative elections that expanded President Javier Milei’s influence in Congress, and Ecuador re-elected center-right Daniel Noboa.